There's now some hope that MegaUpload users will get their data back, even though it's a slim one. At the very least, the lawsuit brought against the US government by one MegaUpload user is going forward as the judge in the case said that hearings were needed to decide who was responsible for the data and what to do with it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion to get the data back in the name of one MegaUpload user, Kyle Goodwin, who lost many hours of sports footage he needed for his work.

The government, understandably, is waiving any responsibility and says users should talk to MegaUpload or Carpathia Hosting, the hosting company MegaUpload used before being taken down.

MegaUpload, the company, is pretty much dead and couldn't access the data even if it wanted to, since it's been seized by the US government and it has been able to pay the hosting bills, so going after MegaUpload would be pointless.

Suing Carpathia is equally pointless, it still wants to get paid for keeping over 1,000 servers on the sideline for nine months and can't hand over the data to anyone but MegaUpload, who owns it, due to privacy laws.

The judge is having a tough time determining who's to blame and how to proceed, which is why he's going ahead with evidentiary hearings, something the government tried to prevent.

"The Court stated today that it will hold a hearing to find out the details about Mr. Goodwin's property - where it is, what happened when the government denied him access to it, and whether and how he can get it back," the EFF wrote.

"The Court has asked Mr. Goodwin and the government to each propose a format for the hearing, which remains unscheduled at this point," it said.